With the suspension of the main political institutions now apparently inevitable, it is important to take stock of the many positives which have been planted in the political landscape of Northern Ireland over the past four and half years.
A period of great difficulty lies ahead. But there there is no justification for despair.
The Belfast Agreement remains the template for the future governance of Northern Ireland. The two governments, the SDLP, Sinn Fein and the middle ground of unionism are committed to the principles and the objectives it set out and which were voted upon by the people of Ireland, North and South. Power must be shared across the two communities. There will be no return to majoritarian rule.
Nor will there be a return to large-scale violence. There is no threat to the IRA ceasefire. The republican leadership has made this plain and the assurance is accepted by the other pro-Agreement players and the two governments. There will be a continuous, if slow, progression by the republicans to full democratisation. Mr Gerry Adams said on Thursday that he had no difficulty with the proposition that the IRA will, in time, disband and be no more. The building of the new police structures continues. It is common case that Sinn Fein will take its place on the Policing Board in due course and that it will support recruitment from among the nationalist community.
These are immense steps forward from where the peace process stood five years ago. Progress has been made in breaking down many of the barriers of mistrust and suspicion. Unhappily, not all those barriers have been eliminated. There are those who have no wish to see them removed; for their political existence is rooted in sectarian and racist hatred.
There are, as Sinn Fein alleges, unionists who dislike power-sharing and whose instincts are subversive of everything the Agreement represents. But there is a broad, middle-ground across both communities which wants to be able to trust, which wants public life in Northern Ireland to be run from within Northern Ireland by its own people. These are the people who cannot but be angered and disquieted by the evidence of continuing IRA activity, by the lack of complete disarmament, by punishment attacks, by espionage. Republicans protest that there is no comparable focus on loyalist violence and murder. But the loyalist paramilitaries do not have colleagues who are ministers in the executive.
A cooling-off period of direct rule is almost certainly the least of several possible evils. The Agreement is resilient and the legislation permitting suspension gives the two governments flexibility. It may be next year before normal business is resumed at Stormont. But with imagination and determination, a way back to functioning democracy can probably be mapped out.